April 2012

March 2012

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What happens if you want all of the RGB? Or as Barry calls it -- just another day at the office.

Watch as he brings together Corsair's assorted RGB components -- from the new H150i PRO CPU Cooler, to the LL (light loop) fans, and even the Vengeance RGB memory -- and displays them in the the 4-sided tempered glass showcase that is the Crystal 570X RGB case.

All that lovely RGB does bring a LOT of cables into the build, so be sure to check out how Barry ultimately cleaned everything up in our cable management time lapse video.

Ah, ok.. You have to play the angle game a bit. From straight on, you don't really see that, but from a front angle, sure. You have to tuck them somewhere, after all.. An extension or end cap (with holes for cables) to cover the unused area might be nice, but we'd have had to remove some portion of a longer shroud to fit the 360mm radiator anyway.

That's always been my biggest gripe about these cases. The shroud on the 460 is perfect, and then they just got rid of it as you move up to the 570, and I'm like. Why couldn't they just keep this one little thing uniform for both cases. Seriously.

So yeah.. we debated this a bit. We did it mostly for the visual effect, to create the "up and over" light pattern through the top glass; however it does also serve to push air across the VRMs. Clearly more intake air than we need, but the fairly open design of the case deals with the extra air intake well.

It was purchased for a previous build and reused in this one. We felt that it wouldn't particularly make a lot of sense to list it at some crazy inflated (and unavailable) price, so we listed it at it's MSRP. And, to be fair, according to our price charts, it has been available sporadically off an on over the past month within about $10-$30 of that price.

Not sure where you see $500, but the EVGA GTX 1080 SC2 runs about $580-$600 normally. We already had it on hand and selected it a while back to use in this build.

FYI, our price history graph shows it's been available within that price range (when it's actually available) over the past month or so. It does also show a few price spikes to $700 and $800, but those appear to be via third party sellers.

Did you have to modify the case for the PSU pass-through? I am probably buying this case in a few weeks and none of the red/black/white ones I have seen have that hole - Only the new mirror black seem to have it.

It seems they've either updated all their cases to include the grommet, or they have some weird inconsistency going on. My black non-mirrored case had the grommet, but I did have to order the shroud cover from Corsair. It was worth it!

I did a very similar build! Very happy with the performance and overall look. The LL120s aren't great performers on a rad, but with the 150i and delidded 8700k, I'm able to run them at 900rpm (silent) and still achieve adequate idle/load temps, ~30°C/65°C.

I have the same case, but in black, and I routed my 24-pin cable basically the same way he did. I found that if I tried to hide it more and run it to the bottom of the channel, it wouldn't reach the PSU. I kind of like that it's exposed, since I used a light blue cable, and it adds to the overall blue look/theme that I wanted.

I'm looking at the parts list and I noticed there are a few compatibility notes.
The motherboard M.2 slot #1 shares bandwidth with SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. When the M.2 slot is populated, two SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports are disabled.
The motherboard M.2 slot #2 shares bandwidth with SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. When the M.2 slot is populated, two SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports are disabled.
The motherboard M.2 slot #3 shares bandwidth with a SATA 6.0 Gb/s port. When the M.2 slot is populated, one SATA 6.0 Gb/s port is disabled.

It should normally be fine -- what it's saying is that for each M.2 slot you use (ie, for an M.2 SSD) that it disables one of the SATA ports used for traditional hard drives/SSDs/optical drives.

It's something you want to know about so that you check the motherboard manual when connecting any SATA drives to make sure you use the correct ports that aren't disabled. In our build above, we just checked the manual before connecting the 3.5" HDD to the motherboard to make sure we didn't use the port that is disabled by the M.2 slot we happened to use. There's 8 SATA ports on this motherboard, so it's not really an issue.

I am adding in some Corsair LED Lighting strips ( 4 of them, 2 in the case, 2 behind the monitors), should I get a commander pro to control it all or does the included Lightning Node Pro work sufficient enough to control it all and change the colors, speeds etc. with Link?

The top does indeed take the 140mm LL fans. I'm using them on my build. I also have 4 of those lighting strips and I have everything plugged into a Commander Pro. I got a Lighting Node Pro in the 3 pack, but I don't use it. I needed the USB hub on the Commander Pro and wanted to control fan speeds. I believe you'll be ok with just the Lighting Node Pro for RGB, but I don't think that controls fan speeds. Check mine out below:

Looks great, love the Tiachi board, though I'm a fan of the ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming board personally. Definitely add the shroud, though I would cut a small pass through in it, get some rubber grommets to make it look nice, and pass the PCI-E cable through it for a nice clean look. Maybe do some sleeving on the AIO tubing to make them white if there's a compatible kit online. I just wish this case had a little bit more room for cable management, mine's cramped, but then again I do have a full custom loop in it.

I just posted my new build last week using the same case, fans, memory and AIO. I got the black case instead of the lighter one and my RAM is black and 2x16 GB 3200. I didn't use the Lighting Node Pro since I got a Commander Pro to plug everything into.

The 3 fan kit comes with the Lighting Node Pro controller. Without it, you won't be able to change the lighting on the fans. (The controller can control up to 6 fans though, so they sell the individual ones in case you want to add more for your particular setup. Corsair sent us two 3 packs, so we used them -- but technically we could have gotten a single 3-pack and 3 additional individual fans to get the same result)

Only thing that might be tight is the RAM clearance with the radiator if mounted up top since the GSkill TridentZ memory is a bit tall.. but it looks like it's been done with success, so should be fine. You could also put the radiator at the front list this one, which is kind of interesting.

It's technically fine, but you might also want to consider bumping the PSU up a bit (maybe 750W?) for a little headroom if you intend to overclock things at all.

Also, (if you have the budget to do so) consider bumping the SSD to 500GB.. 250, even with the intent to mainly be an OS drive, just fills up so quickly..

Question about RAM, could I replace the 2x8 RAM with 4x8 RAM (same Corsair RGB white mode) would clearance be fine here or no. I really want to use this build with changing just some of the parts for performance reasons.

Correct -- they are different. The fans included are the original Corsair "SP" fans. You can't mix the different fan types (SP, HD, LL, ML/RGB) on a single controller hub. That said, we technically could have kept the SP fans and added LL's using the Lighting Node Pro with two hubs (since our 3-pack included a second hub). The LL fans would connect on a hub connected to one channel on the Lighting Node Pro while the SP fans would connect to the second channel / hub.

We love this build! Hard to find anything not to like... if we had to find one, it would be the case chassis color. White rarely looks good when combined with Tinted Glass in our opinion. If at least the fan mount locations where BLACK or the entire case frame was black it would look so much cleaner. But we LOVE the hardware selection and configuration. Well played!

For advice on an alternate version of the build, I'd recommend posting your part list in the Create a Part List for Me forum and ask for help getting to the budget you had in mind, noting which parts you are hoping to keep in place and any other thoughts on what you are hoping to see in the build. Lots of folks willing to help there, if you give them some good parameters around what you're looking to build. Good luck planning your build!

We debated this a bit ourselves, but temperatures were normal in our benchmarking. The sides of the case (along the edges of each glass panel) are actually open, so the air is not as trapped as it might seem at a glance. And ultimately, if you want the rings to light up through the glass, it sort of forces your hand on air flow choices. Thankfully it worked out!

Hey, I'm wondering, does this motherboard have any more fan connectors available or are they filled by the fans you have installed? I wanted to install a second set of fans on the other side of the radiator to increase airflow.

Could anyone tell me a motherboard that I can use instead of this one please, preferably one t=with the same features as I am willing to build my PC with the new RTX 2080 Ti Graphics card but this motherboard shown in the video is out of stock from the website i'm buying my parts from :(

Great build! I was looking for a cool RGB build to do with my son and saw yours so I copied it. Thank you so much for the video, it saved us hours! He loves it (and so do I)! I haven't built a pc in years so this was a fantastic help.

Since you removed the pre-installed lighting controller, are the buttons on the case inactive - mine don't work and I'm assuming that's the reason. Also, what's the easiest way to get back to the fan color scheme of rolling the colors from the front to the top and the back after you've changed it with iCue? Do I have to create my own profile with iCue to replicate that?